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Historical/Biographical Note

The Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (JAFRC) emerged in 1941superseding several
earlier committees and organizations that had been developed to secure humanitarian
aid for refugees of the Spanish Civil War. Along with providing humanitarian aid,
the JAFRC was “dedicated to the rescue and relief of thousands of anti-fascist fighters
trapped in Vichy France, and North Africa so that they [could] return to the active
fight against the Axis.”
Dr. Edward Barsky, leader of American medical volunteers in Spain during the Spanish
Civil War and chairman of the North American Spanish Aid Committee, became the national
chairman of the JAFRC. Dorothy Parker was the chairman for the Spanish Refugee Appeal,
the fundraising arm of the JAFRC. Prominent religious leaders, artists, musicians,
scientists and academics were among the sponsors of the JAFRC, including Leonard Bernstein,
Albert Einstein, Lillian Hellman, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson and Orson Welles.

Early in 1946 Barsky, Executive Secretary Helen R. Bryan and Executive Board members
of JAFRC were subpoenaed to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities
(HUAC), to surrender financial records, and to turn over the names of contributors
and recipients of aid. After refusing to comply with HUAC demands, Barsky and the
entire board of JAFRC were charged with contempt of Congress and convicted in June
1947.

Three years of appeals that challenged the constitutionality of the HUAC hearings
ended in 1950 when the Supreme Court refused to review the convictions. The board
members were sentenced to three months in prison, and Barsky, as the JAFRC’s chairman,
was sentenced to six months in the Federal Penitentiary in Petersburg, Virginia and
fined $500. Barsky resigned from JAFRC and in 1951 Dr. Mark Straus, who had served
as a physician and a soldier in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion during the Spanish Civil
War, was elected chairman of the organization.

Despite the change in leadership, the JAFRC was unable to avoid the scrutiny of the
United States government. In 1952 the JAFRC, whose tax-exempt status had been rescinded
by the Bureau of Internal Revenue in 1948, was sued by the United States Department
of the Treasury for $307,000 in back taxes. The next two years found the JAFRC attempting
to ward off efforts by the United States Congress’s Subversive Activities Control
Board (SACB) to force the JAFRC to register as a Communist front organization. In
1955, citing harassment by the HUAC, the SACB and the Treasury Department, the board
of JAFRC voted to disband.